Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is the first expansion pack for Guild Wars 2 and was released on October 23, 2015[1]. A playable version was available at the PAX East gaming festival, March 6-8 2015, and the EGX Rezzed gaming festival, March 12-14 2015. Additional questions may be answered in this FAQ.

In-game items will be delivered through the in-game mail and the account will be upgraded with the next log-in.

One Level-80 Boost included in a shared inventory slot per account. Multiple purchases of Heart of Thorns will not yield multiple Level-80 Boosts.

Upgrading

If a player bought the Standard version of the expansion, they can choose to upgrade to the Deluxe version via the Black Lion Trading Company for 2,400. You cannot upgrade to Ultimate from either Standard or Deluxe.

New Guild Wars 2 accounts registered between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 will automatically be refunded what the player paid for the core game if Heart of Thorns is pre-purchased by July 31, 2015.[2]

Each Mastery Point tied to a particular objective can only be acquired once per account

Mastery points can be earned prior to level 80, but points can only be spent at level 80[3]

Masteries, Mastery Tracks and Mastery Points are divided into 2 separate categories: one for Central Tyria and one for the Heart of Maguuma, each leveled up through earning experience in the respective region

One Mastery Track can be active at a time; while active, a Mastery Track is filled by earning experience

After earning enough experience for a new tier, its mastery can be unlocked by spending Mastery Points

Completing a Mastery Track can reward all your account's characters with new abilities, such as:

Learning hang gliding to soar through the air instead of falling, or learning to use various mushrooms in the jungle to bounce to higher places, run faster or recharge your skills

Learning the languages of the civilizations of the jungle, earning their trust, challenging their champions, unlocking secret locations and learning new combat techniques

Legendary Dragon Stance (Glint): provides the revenant with access to many boons which can be shared with allies. Furthermore, each boon-sharing skill has a release skill which releases energy to devastate an area

Choosing an elite specialization fundamentally changes the way each profession plays by unlocking access to a previously unavailable weapon as well as new traits, skills and unique profession mechanics

Holding objectives around each keep gives abilities, in proximity to the respective keep, to the world that holds it.

Earth Keep: when controlling the shrines around it; the keep raises earthen walls to block enemy armies, turrets spawn to cripple and hinder enemies, and a sandstorm spawns that cloaks allies while entering it.

Fire Keep: when controlling the fire keep; magma pools become available to allow allied players to teleport between the pools, allies gain immunity to burning, and allies gain the ability to turn into an Inferno Hound.

Air Keep: when controlling parts of the air keep; launch pads become available to allow players to traverse to the top of the keep's cliffs quickly, air turrets activate that can blow enemies off certain areas, and allies gain immunity to fall damage while around air keep.

Revisions to WvW will be made so that holding objectives becomes a bigger part of victory in all maps

The new maps will initially replace the existing borderlands maps, but they will be reintroduced in some form at a later date.

Guild halls will be locations discovered and entered on the world map, but are instances your guild owns. The plan is to ground the story of guild halls and their experience in the story of the jungle.[6]

Scribe is a new guild crafting discipline, used to create consumables, World versus World bonuses, and decorations for the hall.

Guild chat — introducing cross-guild chat. From your main guild panel, you'll be able to assign which guilds you can chat to with new channels, /g1 through /g5. You can then decide which channels will be visible in your chat tabs. The existing guild chat channel, /g, will continue to chat to your currently represented guild.

Guild currencies

New currencies

Favor incentivizes guilds to gather and complete missions on a weekly basis

Aetherium replaces the pacing elements of the current queue system and establishes a baseline rate at which our largest guilds can progress that cannot be circumvented by spending gold.

Resonance serves the sole purpose of speeding up the assembling of guild items and removes the need to balance other currencies around that. Meanwhile, resonating shards reward guild members through successful guild missions.

Existing currencies

Influence will no longer be able to be acquired once the new system is released. Previously accumulated influence will be used to accelerate your initial progress in building up your guild hall in the following ways:

Each day, you may trade a limited amount of influence for favor.

Once per day, you may use influence to purchase a small boost to your aetherium production.

Guild upgrades — these mechanics will be moved out of the guild panel into physical structures with NPCs within the Guild Initiative and halls. If your guild has obtained the necessary research level and prerequisites to have consumables like banners or Vault Transport unlocked under the current system, you will have them unlocked to craft in the new system.

The cap on all of the guild consumables that will be transferring to the new system will be raise to a maximum of 25.

Temporary guild-wide bonuses will be permanent bonuses once unlocked or effects (like food and utility effects, maximum of 1) available from a vendor in the tavern.

World versus World objective bonuses will be permanently unlocked and apply to any claimed area.

Any consumable upgrades your guild has purchased that fall into the categories being removed will need to be used before the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns or they will disappear.

Guild missions — will be available to all guilds and will not require upgrades to unlock. Each guild will have a limited amount of missions available and additional missions can be unlocked by upgrading the guild. Missions are free to activate and guilds are able to retry each if the mission is failed. Only one mission can be active at a time.

New daily achievements replace the daily bonus chest and will focus on three ranges as well as a specific scale.

Fractal Encryptions are reward chests from completing a fractal that can be traded to other players; containing Mini Professor Mew (as well as other unique mini pets), new ascended aquatic-breather recipes, high-level crafting materials, or many other rewards